Even so, those two different bits of information at the same time caused me to really consider the idea of the public domain and what that even means. Look at this year's Oscar poster, look at something like "The Artist" or "Hugo," or look at that documentary, and it's apparent that the main message Hollywood wants to sell you is that the memories Hollywood creates are the things that we all share, that unite us.

Isn't that the big idea behind public domain in the first place?

If you create something that everyone eventually internalizes, something like… let's pick a random example that has nothing to do with anything I happened to publish in the last week on this blog like, say, "Lord Of The Rings"… something that is hugely influential and widely commercialized and heavily exploited… then after a certain amount of time, you're going to have to expect things like fan fiction and different interpretations and parody and homage and plain old fashioned borrowing, and there comes a point where law was designed to finally say, "Okay, everyone, have at it. The creator has had enough time with it. Everyone knows it at this point. It's all yours. Do with it what you will." That's what the law originally had in mind, with a set time period that could be renewed if the author still had an active interest in the thing. If not, if no one stepped forward to claim something, then it would become public domain.

In 1978, the law was revised, and the result is a maddening mess, encouraged by giant corporate copyright mills like Disney, and I get it. I fully understand why they want to continue to push and twist and fight for control of certain things. I think the period in which the "creator," which has become a corporate behemoth instead of a person, can exploit a piece of successful material has become a much more refined and long-lived process that originally anyone understood or could imagine.

It is genuinely shocking to realize that under one interpretation of the law, all three parts of Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings" would be public domain as of today. I'm sure after the tens of millions of dollars in legal fees spent by MGM, New Line, and Warner Bros over the last five years, all involved are very, very happy that isn't the case. They have a strong financial stake in making sure that those copyrights and the copyrights to everything else that Tolkien ever wrote stay locked up tight for as long as possible. That's what they were fighting for. Songs like "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Tutti Fruitti" and "Unchained Melody" and "Ain't That A Shame" have long since become part of our cultural wallpaper, shared memory that you can call up at an instant. A big part of film in the '70s and '80s was capturing an agreed-upon record of what the '50s and '60s were like, and now that we're in 2011, we're seeing people do the same for the '80s and '90s. We want to make movies about the way we remember the eras we lived through. God, I feel like I lived through the '60s myself after living through every hour of film about it that was released during the Boomer post-"Big Chill" nostalgia explosion. And I liked a lot of it. But it's about a time I have no real memory of. My memory is shaped by every use of that music, every use of certain TV clips or real footage or news faces. I'd argue that at this point, the '60s in general should be public domain. You should be able to do something and say whatever you want about the '60s and use whatever archived whatever you want because it's history at this point. It's something we've boxed up and processed and digested and that, to me, is what the public domain is.

That article is, of course, the tip of the iceberg in the larger conversation about copyright law and the ever-changing legislative approach to the subject. That site, in general, is a good place to poke around if the subject interests you.

I think it's real hard to claim any position in the conversation is particularly moral. The law exists to deal with financial realities and potentials, and the broader conversation is more about the idea of how we digest media from decade to decade and as it recedes into memory.

Comments

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Imagine STAR WARS free for all... imagine young, creative and inspired filmmakers to just riff on it. How wonderfully that would widen the popcultural landscape! Pity it's not gonna happen. Even if the reasons are perfectly clear.

I think something like Star Wars being public domain would be a bad idea.

As much as I'm sure you're right, Flower, and a lot of inspired projects may come out of it. I could also see a boatload of lazy filmmaking spring from the belief that more Star Wars equals more money, and Lucas' original vision and themes becoming completely diluted over time.

Abtruse mentions Sherlock Holmes below, and right now there is currently a Sherlock Holmes film out in theaters, and a contemporary version of Sherlock Holmes playing on the BBC. Even though these versions may be fun, the question arises: did we really need them? Are they true to the vision of the characters that Arthur Conan Doyle conceived? Would he be proud of them? Or are they just another cash grab?

Even though I enjoyed The Muppets, I can understand the idea that The Muppets truly died with Jim Henson. The new Muppets were fun, and the filmmakers clearly respected the material, but it plays more like a very expensive fanfilm than something that came from Henson. With Henson, there was a real resonance that the current version of the muppets, without him, seems to lack.

I think we as a film community are suffering some form of arrested development. Contemporary filmmakers seem like overgrown man-children who are mining the past for ideas instead of looking ahead.

Travis Johnson is right, instead of playing with other peoples films, we need filmmakers who are creative and inspired enough to come up with new intellectual properties.

"..mining the past for ideas instead of looking ahead." accurately describes the creative output of Sophocles, Shakespeare and Chaucer. Even Lucas admitted adapting his characters and ideas from other sources.

The big difference is that Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and arguably, Lucas, are geniuses who put their own spin on historical events and works they were inspired by.

They weren't some hack instructed by some studio executive to blatantly xerox an old IP for its nostalgia factor, just to make a buck.

A good example may be Ridley Scott's return to Alien and Blade Runner. I know I'm in a minority here, but I never got the impression that Scott was too psyched to return to these franchises over the years; but now he's doing Alien and Bladerunner film back to back?

Sorry to be cynical, but it sounds like a way to make some money and reestablish himself as a director. Scott's creative output has been hit or miss over the last decade. But he did create one classic: the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven.

If a director of Scott's talent spends the next five years directing prequels and sequels, that takes away any chance that we'll be getting new and exciting works, like Kingdom of Heaven, from him. We'll just get more of what we've seen before. It's a shame, really.

Hacks are going to make movies no matter what. I'd say all of the versions of Sherlock Holmes keeps the sources alive and well, and maybe get new people to read them.

As for Star Wars...even without being public domain there are TONS of riffs and homages to it. Go on Youtube and watch a million fan videos from lightsaber fights to full fledges special effect productions, from horrible quaility to great. It hasn't diluted Star Wars at all. I give Lucas a lot of credit, he has encouraged this and has been clear he doesn't care. He's even put up free sound effects and such for people to use for their videos.

I agree, Muh. Lucas is very generous when it comes to fan generated content and expanded universe content. And he lets certain mediums, like video games and television expand on the universe, though it seems very controlled.

I just know he keeps a pretty firm stranglehold on anyone making further Star Wars films. Names like Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and Simon Pegg have been floated to continue Star Wars because they are unabashed fanboys. And even though each of them is great at what they do, I just don't see them having the skill to pull off something on this scale.

And yes, current versions of Sherlock keep the character relevant and probably keep Conan Doyle's descendants financially secure. But are they respectful of Doyle's vision of the characters. Would he be proud of them? I'm not so sure.

The truth is, I don't see people who view these recent incarnations of Sherlock reading the original Doyle versions. I see picking up Doyle's stories, expecting one thing, and being disappointed how paced and antiquated the stories are.

Does it really matter if the new versions of Sherlock are true to Doyle's version? I really like the original stories, and I also really enjoy the movies. I don't need those two things to be the same to enjoy them. If want something faithful to Doyle's work, I'll always have his stories to read. If I want something a little different, a little more modern, I'll watch the movies.

I'm glad you really enjoy the current incarnations of Sherlock, Nicole.

But I think it does matter that the new versions are true to Doyle's version. I don't subscribe to the concept that once a work is brought out into the world by an artist, it becomes the property of the people.

I believe an artist's work is his and his alone.

The truth is, what do I know? Maybe Doyle himself would really love these current incarnations of his work; as Muh mentioned above: it certainly keeps Sherlock Holmes relevant.

But it does beg the question: what if Doyle would not appreciate these current incarnations? What if he was wholeheartedly against them.

For me, I'd like to not even risk it. Instead of regurgitating others ideas ad nauseum, I'd like Hollywood to concentrate on some new IP's.

For me, it's Sherlock Holmes and the works of Lovecraft. Under the current law, it's a giant tangle because half the works are public domain and half aren't. Which makes for some very legal entanglements from an independent filmmaker or writer who wants to play in either of those sandboxes.

You can use works that are protected under copyright, you just need to get permission legally to do that. And copyright holders are not just corporations - at least in music most songwriters are individuals and many of the songwriters that wrote songs in the 50's and 60's are still alive - so they are supposed to give up that income because you don't feel that people should have to get permission to use that song? And they usually want to make money themselves. How is that fair?

For me, copyright should last for a certain period of time following the death of the original author. As long as the original creator is alive, their right to the property they created (or the rights of whomever they chose to sell it to) should be sacrosanct.

I have no problem with fan fiction or homages, but as an aspiring author, the idea that someone could take the characters and scenarios I have invested so much of my time and creative effort into and have the legal right to do whatever the hell they like with them (good or bad), and make money for it, is kind of unpleasant. For those who might argue that I'm only concerned with money, I'd point out that I already put some of my work out for free, including a full-length thriller currently being serialised on my blog.

For another thing, open copyright discourages people from creating original work (of which there isn't nearly enough right now anyway). If writing James Bond novels had been a legitimate career path when I was growing up, that's what I would have done. Instead, while my work is inspired by many thriller writers I read as a child, my characters and world are my own, something I am now proud of (despite them being unpublished).

Should my characters inspire people to similar things or be taken up again after I'm gone, then that would be incredible, the sort of thing any writer would dream of. But while I'm alive, the thought of that happening is hugely discouraging.

Whoa, Drew, um, you are way way off on this man. I know it's fashionable to whine about "corporations" but the bottom line is when a person creates something, it is their property. Just because X number of years pass doesn't mean that someone else should have the right to start slapping those characters on condoms. I'm a cartoonist myself, and I want those rights to be passed on to who I think should have them. They are MY characters and the stories they appear in are MY stories. Let's use an analogy. The Ford Mustang was released in 1968. According to your logic, that's long enough for public domain, so hell, anyone should be able to build a Ford Mustang and sell them! Or let's take another example, Casablanca was released in 1942, so hell, Uwe Boll should be able to take the footage and recut it and add explosions, because you know, EVERYONE HAS SEEN IT. Dude, I expect better from you. It's not about the money, it's about artistic integrity and the best way to protect that is through legal and financial barriers.

Copyright law has been badly mangled. 95 years copyright, with no necesitty to re-register it every few years? Retroactively applied to works of the past? Copyright isn't like drinking age. Works should lapse according to THE LAW OF THEIR TIME!

Don't take it as a spam, but I was searching for information who owns Tolkien's copyrights and I found your article. I was writting my article - a bit different, but about copyright expiration using four cases, JRR Tolkien, Walt Disney, st. Faustine and Janusz Korczak.